


Love in a Dangerous Time

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Nick Miller Does Not Exist [1]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Developing Relationship, Dubious Morality, Established Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Undercover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 01:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10149656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: Drabble series for an AU where Julius Pepperwood is a hitman or an assassin-for-hire.





	1. Immunity (Or The Lack Thereof)

_Everyone’s in love with her._

That’s the first thing he thinks when he sees her. He smokes a cigarette and watches all the other men falling all over themselves to impress her. _Damn, this is embarrassing._ This would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. 

It’s a good thing he doesn’t believe in love. He’s immune to her. She ignores everyone else though, all those other men, and focuses the full weight of her cerulean gaze on him. _Fuck, he’s a goner too._

She approaches him and asks to bum a smoke. He lights it for her. If she asked him for the moon, he’d probably get that for her too.

He knows she would eat him alive. She’d break his heart and he’d let her.

She smiles at him and he thinks it would be a very lovely way to die.


	2. Maneater

“I know you,” she says.

“Doubtful,” he shoots back.

“Bulletproof. That’s what they call you.”

He pulls a face at that. It’s a dumb nickname that Ryan gave him. He hates wearing the vest since it slows him down too much. He knows it’s reckless but he’s never been shot either so he thinks the Universe is on his side. He doesn’t like to tempt Fate though. You get a nickname like that and the next thing you know you wind up dead. 

He lets Ryan call him that though because he’s earned the right to call him that. They’ve been together since the beginning. Ryan’s the one that’s made sure he’s made it out alive from every single assignment. He’d trust that guy with his life and he can’t say that about a lot of people. So he lets Ryan call him that dumb nickname because it’s Ryan’s “thing.” He has a nickname for everybody. Julius likes to call him 007. He’s pretty much the archetype of what Julius thought he would be when he first started doing this. Having that accent doesn’t hurt either.

She takes a drag from her cigarette. “What do they call me?”

“I don’t think you want to know.”

“I can take it.”

She’s flirting with him, but he doesn’t take the bait. “Maneater. That’s what they call you.”

She isn’t offended at all. In fact, she might even be amused. “Well, it’s not a lie. But men fall in love so easily. It’s hardly a challenge.”

She leans in close to him. “You aren’t going to fall in love with me, are you?” Her perfect pink lips are inches from his face. That wicked gleam in her eye makes want crawl under his skin, desire claw through every single one of his cells. The magnetic blue pools of her eyes pull him in. 

He's drowning in her but fuck if he would ever let her know it. He levels her with a cool stare. “Not a chance.”

She smiles at him. “I knew I was going to like you.”


	3. Love Is a Four-Letter Word

He’s giving her the silent treatment. Curt yes and no answers, professional but cold as ice towards her. Prickly Julius who shuts her out and asks to get switched to a desk job in Germany to get away from her where she knows he probably spends the morning meetings imagining using the suits for target practice in his mind while they drone on about expense reports he couldn’t care less about. _Do me a favor and shoot me in the head if they ever send me to be a paper-pusher, Night,_ he used to say to her. He was always more afraid of the mental suicide of boredom than he ever was of physical death. But he chose to be one of the living zombies back at headquarters to get away from her and that hurts. He gets up to go take a cigarette break outside and she follows him.

He leans against the back wall of the alleyway and she stands next to him, the tense silence in between them. He doesn’t look at her.

“This is how it’s going to be, Julius? You aren’t even going to talk to me for the rest of your life?”

He lights up a cigarette, the bright flame briefly illuminating his face before it is cast back into shadow. He blows out smoke into the night. “I have nothing to say to you, Jess.”

“Why can’t it be the way it was? Why can’t we just be friends?”

“I don’t want to be your friend, Jess. If that’s what you want, find some other guy. You’re not the type of girl who ever has to go home alone at the end of the night.”

“But they aren’t you.”

She steps into his personal space and he lets her. She fits herself against him, her face tucked into the hollow of his throat. “You weren’t supposed to fall in love with me, Julius,” she whispers to him. “You promised.”

He cups her cheek with his hand. “I know. I’m sorry. For that, I’m sorry.”

She looks into his eyes and he’s open to her again. Not Prickly Julius but Warm Julius, Teddy Bear Julius who likes to wrap his arms around her when he’s sleeping and take her dancing when no one else is looking. _Her_ Julius who looks at her with love in his eyes and loves her even when she can’t love him back. 

“In or out, Jess?”

She can’t love him. She can’t love anyone. But for him she wants to want to. For him, she would try. “In.”

She leans in to kiss him but he takes a step back from her. The door opens behind them and Ryan steps out. He looks in between them. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Julius says gruffly. _Prickly Julius again. Julius with a titanium heart who lives with ice water running through his veins._

Ryan shrugs and lets it go. “Phone call for you, Julius.”

Ryan turns and goes back inside. They follow him. In the hallway, behind Ryan’s back and where no one else can see, her fingers graze the palm of his hand like a promise. Julius grasps her hand and squeezes it briefly before he lets her go.


	4. His Human Flaw

In the end, he’s only a man. His heart isn’t made of titanium. It’s made of flesh and blood just like the rest of them. It makes him want. It makes him weak.

He’s dangerous of course. But she likes danger, likes to play with fire, get close enough to the flames to get burned before slipping out of its grasp. He’s dangerous to everyone else, but mainly to himself.

She knows men. They love the allure of unattainable things. They want her because they can’t ever have her. But him? She doesn’t really know what he wants. He lives his life in shadows and low places. He tells her he doesn’t believe in anything. She doesn’t think that’s true. He lies to everyone, including himself.

Other people would describe him as the cautious type, but she can see that he’s reckless with his heart just like he’s reckless with his life. Love makes people blind. He guards his heart from everyone but her. She holds his heart in her hand and she knows she could crush it, break him into a million pieces, destroy him like so many other men before him. She doesn’t want to, but that’s what she does. He doesn’t see it. He thinks he’s different, that it will be different this time. He tells her he doesn’t believe in anything, but she knows he believes in her. It makes him want. It makes him weak. In the end, he’s only a man.


End file.
